This kingdom does not come by political machinations. This kingdom does not come by military might. It doesn’t come by bullets or ballets, by elections or intrigues, by democracies or demagogueries. The kingdom of God comes quietly, almost secretly. Like seed growing, like bread rising. It comes like a long walk home. It comes in whispers and quiet conversations. It comes while people are sleeping. It comes in surprising ways and by unauthorized agents. It comes through the gradual transformation of hearts and minds one life at a time. The kingdom of God comes in a million different ways as people become fascinated with Jesus Christ, find his forgiveness, and learn to extend it to others.

Instead of riding a warhorse into Jerusalem, as Pontius Pilate no doubt did, Jesus did something else. In a deliberate mockery of a Roman triumph (as a deliberate rejection of Roman ways), Jesus chose to ride a domesticated beast of burden instead of a warhorse. Jesus was choosing the way of humility, the way of salvation, the way of peace. So he chose the donkey. With his feet dragging the ground as he sat astride the little animal, the Roman soldiers must have had a good laugh at this peasant version of a triumphal entry. It was comical, because everyone knows a king rides a warhorse and not a donkey. But this king is different–this king is the Prince of Peace. And though the scoffing Romans could never have imagined it, the kingdom of this Prince of Peace has spread to the ends of the earth, just as Zechariah prophesied.

Christian forgiveness is not simply a private matter between the sinner and God. Forgiveness has a horizontal dimension as well. This is why in the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to forgive us, while in the same breath pledging to forgive others. Forgiveness is God’s way of achieving peace. In fact, it is ultimately the only way of achieving peace between alienated parties. Justice alone is incapable of producing peace. The peace the Bible is interested in involves not only the cessation of hostilities but also the reconciliation of enemies.

Peace. Peace among nations. World peace. It’s the wish of dippy beauty queens. It’s also the dream of the prophets. In our war-torn world, it’s easy to be cynical about any prospects for peace that go beyond the realm of our own private emotions. But the Bible does not endorse such cynicism. In one sense, peace has always been an impossible dream–but a dream the prophets dared to imagine anyway. The first mention of peace among the prophets is when the prophet Isaiah speaks of a coming Prince of Peace.

Religiously inspired intolerance can lead people to do extremely ugly things. Crusades and inquisitions are what happen when Christianity loses the beauty of imitating Christ. A Christianity that, though orthodox in doctrine, is retaliatory in attitude is a Christianity that has betrayed the cross and lost its beauty. A Christianity that is absent the beauty of imitating Christ in nonretaliatory, unconditional forgiveness becomes a Christianity focused on its own interests and self-preservation. This is the ugly Christianity that demands rights and angrily protests when it is treated by the world as Christ was treated by the world. The irony is tragic.

Ours is a pragmatic age, and we are the spiritually poorer for it. Pragmatism as a worldview is a distortion of God’s creation. Pragmatism is a kind of vandalism. Pragmatism sees creation as a commodity to be used–it assigns value on the basis of how a thing can be “made useful.” Pragmatism is a spiritual blindness, a blindness that misses much of the value of beauty because beauty isn’t “useful” in any utilitarian sense. Beauty belongs to those things that, though not necessary for survival, are necessary to make survival worth the effort.

Beauty far too often goes unrecognized. There is something tragically profane about our technological society if it blinds us to the beauty of creation–something profane, dehumanizing, and denigrating. We must not allow cubicles, computer screens, and the maddening pace of modern life to distract us from the important task of marveling at the beauty God creates day by day.

For Etty Hillesum, the memory of jasmine and a glimpse of the sky–even at Auschwitz–was enough to remind her that life is beautiful and to evoke in her a deep sense of worship! If ever there was a hell on earth, surely it was Auschwitz. Yet Etty Hillesum testified that she was able to find beauty and worship the Creator of that beauty…even amidst the horrors of Auschwitz. Such capacity to find God in even the most hellish of places reminds me of these words of David: “If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” Wherever we find the footsteps and fingerprints of God, there we find beauty.

In much of evangelical thought, the Golden Rule has been reduced to a quaint platitude about being a nice person. Something from Mr. Rogers’s neighborhood. As such, it has been banished to children’s church, where it’s used to teach kids how to “play nice.” Meanwhile the narrow gate is somehow morphed into the sinner’s prayer–the formula for how to get your ticket to heaven.